Character of Renaissance Architecture/Chapter 14

by Charles Herbert Moore

CHAPTER XIV

ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND

II. Jones and Wren

It is only by extension of the term that the architecture of England in the seventeenth century may be properly called Renaissance. But if, in architecture, we understand by Renaissance a revival of the use of classic details, such extension is justifiable, for in this architecture the use of classic details is becoming established, and the art of Jones and Wren stands in relation to the Elizabethan architecture as the art of Vignola and Palladio does to that of the early Renaissance in Italy, and that of Lescot and De l'Orme to the early French Renaissance.

Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren were the only English architects of great importance at this epoch. It was their genius that determined the character of modern English architecture, and we may therefore confine our attention to their works.

Of Jones, Horace Walpole thus speaks in his Anecdotes of Painting:^[1] "Inigo Jones, … if a table of fame like that in the Tatler were to be framed for men of indisputable genius in every country, would save England from the disgrace of not having her representative among the arts. … Vitruvius drew up his grammar, Palladio showed him the practice, Rome displayed a theatre worthy of his emulation, and King Charles was ready to encourage, employ, and reward his talents." This famous architect began his artistic career in the early part of the seventeenth century. Nothing is known of his early education, but in youth he appears to have manifested an inclination for drawing, and to have acquired some skill in landscape painting.^[2] He does not seem to have had any systematic training in architecture, but in early life he travelled in Italy,^[3] where he studied the ancient monuments and read the works of Palladio and other Italian authors. In a book entitled Stonehenge Restored,^[4] he says: "Being naturally inclined in my younger years to study the arts of design, I passed into foreign parts to converse with the great masters thereof in Italy, where I applied myself to search out the ruins of those ancient buildings which, in despite of time itself, and violence of barbarians, are yet remaining. Having satisfied myself in these, and returning to my native country, I applied my mind more particularly to the study of architecture." For a quick-witted man with architectural aptitudes no training could be better, except that of growing up in an atmosphere of building activity, as the craftsmen of the Middle Ages did.

In his first practice Jones appears to have worked in a mixed style. The mongrel Elizabethan art was still in full vogue, and with this style, says Cunningham, "Inigo compounded, and for some time persevered in what the wits of the succeeding age nicknamed King James's Gothic." The well-known porch of St. Mary's church, Oxford, if it be by Jones, may furnish an example of this earlier style. But he soon sought to free himself from the vagaries of the Elizabethan craftsman, and strove to introduce a rigorous use of Palladian forms. He had learned the grammar of the orders as formulated by the architects of the later Renaissance, and had apparently conceived a sincere belief that the Palladian canons embodied all that was most excellent in architectural design. He saw in the Elizabethan art only its manifold infractions of the rules of order and proportion, and its grotesque distortions of classic forms. To reestablish these rules and restore these forms appeared to him the way to regenerate English art.

First among his extant works that can be certainly identified is the well-known Banqueting Hall built in 1619, for King James I, as a part of the projected palace of Whitehall, for which he had prepared the plans on a vast scale. The first remark prompted by this design is that it is not at all English.

Every form and feature of the native art is eliminated. The Elizabethan house, however overlaid with foreign elements, was English in its primary forms and expression. But here Inigo Jones swept away everything English, and substituted a Palladian scheme that is foreign to England in every particular. The low-pitched roof, the plain rectangular outline, and the narrow undivided window openings are as Italian as the orders with which the façade is overlaid. But such was the state of taste among the influential classes that these features were approved, and the design was applauded with acclamation. "It spread," says Cunningham, "the love of classic architecture far and wide, and there was soon a growing demand for works which recalled Athens to the learned, and presented something new to the admiration of the vulgar."^[5] The learned had then small knowledge of Athenian architecture, and even now many learned people fail to consider that there was never in Athens anything at all like Palladian design.

The façade of the Banqueting Hall (Plate X) is in two stories on a low basement, and has a rusticated wall of smooth-faced masonry, with an engaged order in each story, and a parapet with a balustrade over the main cornice. The central part of this façade has its wall slightly advanced, and in each story the orders, Ionic and Corinthian respectively, have engaged columns against the projecting middle part, and pilasters on either side, a pair of them being set together at each end. These pilasters taper and have strong entasis, so that parts of those on the angles overreach the end walls. The entablatures are carried by the walls, and thus have to be broken into ressauts to cover the columns and pilasters. The structural function of all these superimposed columns and pilasters is therefore only that of carrying the ressauts of the parapet. The rectangular windows, of severely classic design, have pediments, alternately curved and angular, in the lower story, and flat cornices only in the story above, while a frieze below the main entablature is adorned in Roman fashion with masks and festoons. It is surprising that such a mechanical reproduction of a foreign style should ever have called forth high praise from Englishmen. The design exhibits no invention, no creative adaptation of foreign elements to new conditions, and therefore

Plate X

BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL
London

no reason for the use of such elements. The low-pitched roof (wholly invisible from any near point of view) is unsuited to the English climate, and the parapet and balustrade are equally inappropriate. Yet of this design Walpole remarks^[6] that "it stands as a model of the most pure and beautiful taste." And an earlier expression of the feeling which prevailed among the dilettanti of the time is found in the text which accompanies Kent's well-known book of Jones's designs^[7] as follows: "If the reputation of this great man doth not rise in proportion to his merits in his own country, 'tis certain, in Italy, which was his school, and other Parts of Europe, he was in great esteem; in which places, as well as in England, his own works are his monument and best Panegyrick; which, together with those of Palladio, remain equal Proofs of the Superiority of those two great Masters to all others."

The whole scheme for the palace of Whitehall is fully illustrated by Kent.^[8] The plan is a vast rectangle measuring 874 by 1151 feet, and comprising seven courts, of which the central one toward the park encloses a circular gallery. The long blocks are broken by rectangular pavilions, one on the axis of each of the four sides, one at each angle, and others at intervals between. It is thus French in character, rather than Italian, and suggests a derivation from De l'Orme's plan of the Tuileries. It is not worth while to examine the architectural character of the elevation fully in detail; but, in addition to the Banqueting Hall already noticed, it may be well to examine several other parts which further illustrate the art of Inigo Jones. The axial pavilions are flanked with rectangular towers in three stages, each stage adorned with an order, and surmounted with an octagonal cupola. On the Westminster front the basement has a Doric order with a modification of De l'Orme's column, in which the larger stones are square. This basement (Fig. 133) has a mezzanine marked by an entablature which is cut in the middle by the keystones of a flat arch over a window beneath. The great entablature in this case is borne by the columns, and the order has thus a structural character (though it has no structural reason for being) which the orders of the Banqueting Hall do not have. The only other feature of Whitehall that need be mentioned is the façade of the circular court enclosed by the king's apartments. This is a bizarre design in two stages, with a so-called Persian order below and an order of caryatids above. The bearing members of these orders stand out beyond the entablatures, and thus support nothing but ressauts, while a balustrade with statues crowns the whole.

Fig. 133.—Basement of a part of Whitehall.

With all his zeal for reform by a stricter conformity to classic models, the designs of Inigo Jones were never truly classical, and they often exhibit ludicrous aberrations. He had no true conception of the principles of classic art, as no architects of the Renaissance ever had. The Palladian architecture, which he mainly strove to follow, was itself, as we have seen, far from true to classic design. Some of these aberrations are strikingly shown in the west front which he built to the nave of old St. Paul's cathedral. In attempting to apply classic details to such a building he was obliged to depart widely from classic principles. His scheme, as shown in Kent's print (Fig. 134) is as incongruous a mixture as was ever produced by the Elizabethan craftsmen. This front, in its main outline, has to follow the form of the Mediæval structure, with its high nave and low aisles. To this mediæval form the architect has affixed a variety of features derived from Roman, Renaissance, and

Fig. 134.—Front of old St. Paul's by Inigo Jones.

even Egyptian sources. He has crowned the wall with a pseudo-classic cornice surmounted by a steep gable, he has set obelisks on Roman pedestals over the buttresses, affixed reversed consoles to the clerestory walls, and built a Corinthian portico with a balustrade upon its entablature, and completed the scheme with flanking towers crowned with lanterns. It is a thoroughly barbarous composition, which even Walpole complains of as follows: "In the restoration of that cathedral he made two capital faults. He first renewed the sides with very bad Gothic, and then added a Roman portico, magnificent and beautiful indeed, but which has no affinity with the ancient parts that remained, and made his own Gothic appear ten times heavier."^[9]

The art of Inigo Jones has been thoughtlessly lauded in more recent times. "His special strength," says Mr. Bloomfield, his latest panegyrist, "lay in his thorough mastery of proportion, his contempt for mere prettiness, and the rare distinction of his style. His own theory of architecture was that, in his own words, "it should be solid, proportional according to the rules, masculine and unaffected."^[10] Was Inigo Jones a master of proportion? Does he not in this declaration betray a fundamental misconception of the true meaning of proportion? Is any genuine work of art "proportional according to the rules," i.e. the mechanical formulas of Vitruvius or Palladio on which he professed to base his practice? And did Jones ever carry out in practice his avowed theory that architecture should be unaffected? Can an art be unaffected which is so frankly copied from a foreign style? I have characterized the spirit of much of the architecture of the Renaissance as theatrical; that of Inigo Jones is preeminently so, and it is significant that he was extensively employed, in his early career, in designing architectural backgrounds for the stage.

The artistic career of Sir Christopher Wren, the most justly famous architect of the belated English Renaissance, began after the Civil War. Inigo Jones had prepared the way for him, and a body of aristocratic dilettanti, ardently devoted to the neo-classic propaganda, had arisen. The artistic notions of these people are instructively set forth in the following passage from Parentalia:^[11] "Towards the end of King James I's Reign, and in the Beginning of his Son's, Taste in Architecture made a bold step from Italy to England at once, and scarce staid a moment to visit France by the way. From the most profound Ignorance in Architecture, the most consummate Night of Knowledge, Inigo Jones started up, a Prodigy of Art, and vied even with his Master Palladio himself. From so glorious an Out-set, there was not any Excellency that we might not have hoped to obtain; Britain had a reasonable Prospect to rival Italy, and foil every Nation in Europe beside. But in the midst of these sanguine Expectations, the fatal Civil War commenced, and all the Arts and Sciences were immediately laid aside."

Before turning his attention to architecture Wren had been a distinguished scholar at Oxford, where he was appointed Professor of Astronomy in the year 1657. It was not until mature manhood that he began the practice of architecture, and thus, like so many others who have achieved distinction in this art, he never had a special and systematic preliminary training for it. His father, Dr. Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor, is said to have been skilled in all branches of mathematics and in architecture,^[12] and this, together with his own native aptitudes, appears to have made it easy for him, by observation and practice, to acquire the necessary preparation for such work as he was to do. His opportunities for study of the architectural monuments of the Continent were small. He never visited Italy, but he spent some months in Paris, and while there wrote, in a letter to a friend, as follows: "I have busied myself surveying the most esteem'd Fabricks of Paris, and the Country round; the Louvre for a while was my daily Object, where no less than a thousand Hands are constantly employ'd in the Works; some in laying mighty foundations, some in raising the stories, columns, entablements, &c., with vast stones, by great and useful Engines; others in Carving, Inlaying of Marbles, Plastering, Painting, Gilding, &c., which altogether make a school of Architecture, the best probably, at this Day in Europe." The Italian architect Bernini was working on the Louvre at the time, and in the same letter Wren writes: "Mons. Abbe Charles introduc'd me to the acquaintance of Bernini, who shew'd me his Designs of the Louvre, and of the King's Statue. … Bernini's Design of the Louvre I would have given my skin for, but the reserv'd Italian gave me but a few Minutes View; it was five little Designs on paper, for which he hath receiv'd as many thousand Pistoles; I had only time to copy it in my Fancy and Memory. I shall be able by Discourse, and Crayon, to give you a tolerable Account of it."^[13]

He appears to have made the most of his time while in France, but he naturally confined his attention to the modern works of that country, which alone were then thought worthy of notice. The great chateaux of Fontainebleau, St. Germains, Chantilly, and many others, he speaks of in the same letter as having "surveyed that I might not lose the impressions of them."

Wren's first architectural work appears to have been the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, which is thus referred to in Parentalia: "This Theatre, a work of admirable Contrivance and Magnificence, was the first publick Performance of the Surveyor,^[14] in Architecture; which, however, had been executed in a greater and better style, with a view to the ancient Roman Grandeur discernable in the Theatre of Marcellus at Rome, but that he was obliged to put a Stop to the bolder strokes of his Pencil, and confine the Expense within the Limits of a private Purse."^[15] But his great opportunity occurred after the fire of London, when he was commissioned to prepare plans for the rebuilding of the city, including the cathedral of St. Paul and all the city churches. Before the great fire he had been ordered to submit designs for the restoration of the old cathedral of St. Paul, the grand old Norman structure, with additions in the early English style, which, notwithstanding the repairs and additions of Inigo Jones, was still thought to be in a dangerous condition. Wren made a careful survey, and worked out a plan, elevation, and section of the old structure, and expressed surprise at what he considered the negligence of the old builders. "They valued not exactness: some Inter-columns were one inch and a half too large, others as much, or more, too little. Nor were they true in their levels."^[16] He thought that the whole fabric was alarmingly insecure, except the portico built by Jones, which, he said, "being an entire and excellent piece, gave great reputation to the work in the first repairs."^[17]

He prepared plans for a thorough restoration, but these were not approved, and he set off for France. Then came the great fire and put an end to all thought of repairs on his part, though the commissioners appear still to have clung to the idea of restoration until they were satisfied, by fruitless effort to utilize what remained of the old work, that such a course was impracticable.^[18]

An entirely new structure was now decided on, and Wren was directed to "contrive a Fabrick of moderate Bulk, but of good Proportions; a convenient Quire, with a Vestibule and Porticoes, and a Dome conspicuous above the Houses. A long Body with aisles was thought impertinent, our Religion not using Processions."^[19]

It is difficult from the statements in Parentalia clearly to identify Wren's different drawings which have been preserved, and to reconcile either the statements or the drawings with what is said by more recent writers, who do not always agree among themselves. The drawings embody widely different schemes which were the results of so many attempts to meet the wishes of the king and court on the one hand, and those of the citizens on the other. Of these there are two sets which may be considered as the principal ones.

The first of these has a novel plan based on that of the Greek cross, but having the reëntrant external angles filled out to segmental curves struck from the corners of a square enclosing the whole. A great dome on a circular drum supported by eight piers rises over the crossing, a small dome on pendentives covers each of the spaces between the great circle and the curved enclosing walls; while the northern, southern, and western arms of the cross have each a square groined vault. The form of the vaulting over the eastern arm is not indicated on the plan, but the choir enclosure is shown in the form of a circle cut out on the east to open into the sanctuary, and on the west to communicate with the nave. The dome (Fig. 135) is in two shells of masonry, the inner one being hemispherical with a circular opening in its crown, and the outer one a pointed oval supporting a lantern. The drum is thick, and although the vault springs from very near the top, a strong continuous abutment in the form of a solid ring of masonry, with concave outline, is built up against it. The dome is kept solid up to the haunch of the inner shell, so that this inner shell is abundantly secured, while the outline of the outer shell, from the point where it clears the solid mass below, has a form that would exert a minimum of thrust, though it would hardly be secure without a binding chain. It is noticeable that the inner face of the drum is not vertical, but inclined inward in the form of a truncated cone, which considerably strengthens it against any tendency to yield to the force of thrust in the dome.

Fig. 135.—Section of Wren's rejected scheme for St. Paul's.

The scheme was clearly based on the model of St. Peter's in Rome, to which frequent reference is made in Parentalia as having been in the mind of the architect as he developed his idea. The dome partakes of the character of Bramante's design on the one hand, and of that of Michael Angelo, as finally constructed, on the other. The likeness to Bramante's scheme (Fig. 23, p. 48) is in the form of the inner shell, and its adjustment to the supporting drum. The likeness as to adjustment is not, indeed, very close; for Wren has raised the springing so that it is almost at the top of the drum, but he has fortified it with a continuous abutment which, though of different outline, has substantially the same structural effect. The likeness to St. Peter's is further shown in the encircling order of the inner face of the drum, which occurs in both Bramante's scheme and in that of Michael Angelo. There can be little doubt that Wren had studied Bramante's design in Serlio's book, and had appreciated its structural merits. But he wished, in emulation of Michael Angelo, to make his dome externally more imposing, and he therefore raised its springing level as we see, and adopted from Michael Angelo's scheme the idea of a double dome. The external outline from the top of the drum to the haunch of the vault is too nearly the same as the corresponding part of Michael Angelo's design to be considered as an accidental coincidence. The structural difference between the two is indeed great, since the concave portion in Wren's design is a continuous ring, while in that of Michael Angelo it is an isolated and insignificant abutment. Wren's scheme is thus superior in point of constructive merit, since it provides continuous resistance to continuous thrust. It will be seen that the two shells of Wren's projected dome correspond to the inner and outer shells of Michael Angelo's model (Fig. 26, p. 54), and thus in reproducing the main idea of this model Wren merely omitted the middle shell. He thus gave a wider divergence to the two vaults as they rise than occurs in the actual dome of St. Peter's. He also omitted the well which in St. Peter's connects the two shells at the crown.

A single order of pilasters adorns both the interior and the exterior of the church itself, the one on the outside being raised on a high basement and crowned with a plain attic; and a portico in the form of a temple front, with its order raised on high pedestals, gives emphasis to the west façade.

This design appears to have been rejected, to Wren's great chagrin, as we learn from the following passage in Parentalia: "The surveyor in private conversation, always seem'd to set a higher value on this design, than any he had made before or since; as what was labour'd with more study and success; and, (had he not been over-rul'd by those, whom it was his duty to obey), what he would have put in execution with more cheerfulness, and Satisfaction to himself. … But the Chapter, and some others of the Clergy thought the Model not enough of a Cathedral-fashion; to instance particularly, in that, the Quire was design'd circular, &c. … The Surveyor then turn'd his Thoughts to a Cathedral-form, (as they call'd it) but so rectified, as to reconcile, as near as possible, the Gothick to a better Manner of Architecture; with a Cupola, and above that, instead of a Lantern, a lofty Spire, and large Porticoes."

I think that had the first design been accepted Wren would not have carried it out without material modifications. For he was too good an engineer not to have seen that the form and adjustment of the dome were seriously defective from a structural point of view. However this may be, the dome which he actually built is, as we shall see, fundamentally different in character (though it is not very different in either internal or external shape), and it is different in a way that no outside influences could have compelled.

The most noticeable feature of the second design is that part which rises over the crossing, and consists of a vast frustum of a dome supporting a tall buttressed drum, which in turn is surmounted by a smaller dome of oval outline, from the crown of which rises a telescopic spire of six stages with a strongly marked cornice to each. It was in this design that he is said to have sought to "reconcile the Gothic to a better Manner." What he meant by this I do not know. Wren can hardly have supposed that he was effecting such a reconciliation by this remarkable combination of dome and spire. But in the actual cathedral of St. Paul we shall find some features that may, in part, explain his meaning.

It is noticeable that the west façade of this design is a close copy, with modifications of proportions and minor details, of the façade by Inigo Jones (Fig. 134, p. 231), which the fire had weakened or destroyed, and which Wren had much admired. This design was approved, and the king's warrant for its execution was issued May 1st, 1675. But it is said that "the king was pleased to allow him the liberty in the prosecution of his work, to make some variations, rather ornamental than essential, as from time to time he should see proper."^[20] The actual building shows how largely Wren availed himself of this liberty.

Plate XI

DOME OF ST. PAUL'S
London

The cathedral of St. Paul as it now stands was never embodied in any set of drawings. Starting with a few rough sketches the scheme was developed as the work proceeded, the master being always present to direct the work. Wren was at the start what would now be called an amateur, but by degrees he learned his art in the best possible way, not in the office or drawing-room, but on the scaffold in close contact with the works. It was thus that Brunelleschi had worked on the dome of Florence, and Michael Angelo on St. Peter's.

The plan of the existing St. Paul's has no beauty comparable to that of St. Peter's (Fig. 31, p. 67). It has a long nave with a short transept near the middle, a semicircular apse, and two western towers. Both nave and transept have side aisles, and in the angles formed by the towers, which project beyond the aisles in the manner that is common in the mediæval churches of England, are a consistory court and a morning chapel, while in the angles of the crossing three vestries and a stair-turret are set. Thus the Greek cross plan which Wren appears to have first intended, "a long body with aisles" having been "thought impertinent, our religion not using processions," was widely departed from in conformity with the popular feeling that the first plan "deviated too much from the old Gothick form of Cathedral Churches, which they (the people) had been used to see and admire in this country."

In the elevation a great dome, in outline not very unlike the one first intended, rises over the crossing; the nave and aisles are vaulted with small domes on pendentives of peculiar form, and the piers of the interior are faced with a great Corinthian order of pilasters. That Wren worked with constant reference to St. Peter's as the main source of his inspiration, is clearly enough manifested in the general scheme, though there are many points of difference between the two monuments, apart from the great difference of scale. Other sources of influence are, however, also apparent.

The most interesting feature of St. Paul's cathedral is, of course, the great dome (Plate XI), which is one of the most remarkable of the series of modern domes that began with the dome of Brunelleschi. In general external form it recalls Bramante's diminutive circular temple of San Pietro in Montorio, and it is not unlikely that Wren derived the idea from the woodcut of that design in Serlio's book, or in that of Palladio. Wren has, of course, altered and amplified the scheme in adaptation to his vast scale and lofty proportions, but the general composition of the two is substantially the same, though the internal structure is entirely different. The leading features of the exterior, the encircling order crowned with the balustrade and the dome rising over it surmounted by the lantern, are those of Bramante's design.

Fig. 136.—Section of the dome of St. Paul's.

The structural system of this dome (Fig. 136) is peculiar. From eight piers arches and pendentives are turned, forming the circular bed from which the drum rises to a great height, and from a level far below the top of this drum a dome of masonry, of slightly oval form is sprung. The drum is double, and the inner wall, which carries the dome, inclines inward, as in the rejected design, up to the springing level, and above this it rises vertically against the haunch of the dome. From the haunch a hollow cone of masonry is carried up far above the crown of the dome, where it is cut off and covered with a small segmental dome surmounted by a tall lantern of stone. The system is devised with a view to stability. The cone shape of the inner drum gives it resistance to the dome thrusts, and these thrusts are further fortified by a solid filling of masonry between the smaller cone above and the vault reaching more than halfway from the springing to the crown. The outer drum is a solid wall up to a level but little higher than the apex of the timber roof of the nave, where it forms a stylobate for the encircling Corinthian order. But the two drums are connected by heavy abutments across the interval between them, one behind each column of the encircling order, with a heavier buttress filling every fourth intercolumniation (Plate XI). The inner drum rises in diminished thickness above the entablature of the outer one in the form of an attic with an order of pilasters and square openings between. From this attic rises a false dome of timber, surrounding and concealing the great cone which is the real support of the lantern.

This remarkable scheme embodies the last notable attempt to solve the great dome problem with which the architects of the Renaissance had struggled from the time of Brunelleschi. But the problem is incapable of a satisfactory solution. It is impossible to make a large unbuttressed dome stand securely except by the extraneous means of binding chains. Wren has not attempted to do such a thing. He was too good an engineer to follow in the footsteps of Brunelleschi and Michael Angelo. His dome is well buttressed, but it is therefore necessarily hidden from view. To raise another dome of masonry from the cornice of the drum for external effect, and to crown such a dome with a stone lantern fifty feet high, he saw to be impossible with safety. A semblance of such a dome was, however, necessary to his scheme. He had been charged to make a dome "conspicuous above the houses," and he therefore surrounded the cone, the true support of the lantern, with a wooden counterfeit of a dome upon which he makes the beholder believe that the lantern rests. The system is thus a monstrous architectural deceit. We have criticised Michael Angelo for springing a great dome from the top of a drum, but he cannot be reproached for deception. His dome is a real dome of masonry, and does carry the lantern as it appears to, though, as we have seen, insecurely, except for so long as the binding chains can be made to save it from collapse. Wren would not build a dome in this inherently weak manner. He preferred to design his masonry construction on sound principles, which would not allow an external dome, and to enclose this within the wooden counterfeit. And it may here be remarked that most modern domes, modelled after St. Peter's and St. Paul's, are wooden constructions and carry lanterns of wood. They are thus entirely safe, but they have not the monumental character of great architectural works. In general external effect the dome of St. Paul's has much merit, if it does not justify the extravagant remark of Mr. Loftie that it is the "noblest dome in Christendom."^[21]

Fig. 137.—Vaulting of St. Paul's.

The proportions of the interior of the church (Plate XII) are admirable, and give a better effect of scale than the larger scheme of St. Peter's. But the details exhibit more of those aberrations that are inherent in the architecture of the Renaissance. The vaulting of the nave (Fig. 137) is in oblong compartments with their long axes running transversely, and the small domes, which are low spherical segments instead of hemispheres, therefore leave considerable

Plate XII

INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S
London

intervals at each end of each compartment, over which segments of barrel vaulting, of a form generated by the elliptical lunettes of the clerestory, are turned. The pendentives thus have a peculiar shape, and are segments of a hemisphere cut by four vertical planes coinciding with the sides of the vault compartment, by a horizontal plane at the base of the dome, and by the interpenetrating barrel vaults. The compartments are separated by transverse ribs, and these, together with the groins formed by the meeting of the pendentives and the interpenetrating lunette vaults, give a somewhat mediæval effect to the vaulting conoid. In other words the lines of the groins and the lunette arches form a combination not unlike that of Gothic vaulting. This may have been one of the points in which Wren fancied that he could "reconcile the Gothic to a better manner."

In the great order Wren has departed from the scheme of St. Peter's in giving only one pilaster to each pier of the nave, though in the larger piers under the great dome he has set them in pairs. Under the archivolts of "the great arcade and under the aisle vaulting the smaller pilasters are coupled, while in St. Peter's they are single. With the details of these orders the architect took great liberties in utter disregard of the canons of Vitruvius and the neo-classic authorities. The crowns of the great arches reach high above the capitals of the pilasters, so that a complete entablature cannot pass over them. It would not, of course, do to allow the archivolts to cut into an entablature, and Wren has therefore omitted the architrave and frieze in the intervals of the order, and has included them only in a ressaut over each pilaster, the cornice alone being carried over the arch. To give the vaulting its admirable elevation without unduly magnifying the great order, as Michael Angelo did in St. Peter's, an attic is interposed, but to spring a vault from an attic wall is an architectural barbarism; though it is perhaps no greater one than to spring it from an entablature, as the architects of the Renaissance had done from Brunelleschi down. In the small order of the aisles the entablature is simplified, and has only an architrave and cornice; while a member, like a diminutive attic, in retreat of the cornice, is interposed at the impost. It looks as if this had been done in order to raise the springing of the arches so that no part of them would be cut off from view by the salience of the cornice; and it was apparently in part for the same reason that the attic was interposed in the nave. The motive is commendable. The effect of vaulting rising directly from a salient cornice Wren may justly have felt to be a bad one, but to avoid it while using classic details necessitates these strange inconsistencies.

Fig. 138.—Crossing pier and impost, St. Paul's.

Among numerous other aberrations of this pseudo-classic scheme is the treatment of the segmental archivolts of the small half domes that open out of the oblique sides of the great octagon at the crossing. The orders of the crossing piers have complete entablatures (Fig. 138), and the archivolts in question are in two parts answering to the frieze and cornice of these entablatures, which they intersect in the awkward manner shown in the figure. To have mitred the cornice of the archivolt to that of the order would have left the pilaster beneath with an incomplete entablature, and the architect preferred to run the cornice through the archivolt in this unsightly way. Such were some of the further makeshifts to which the designers of the Renaissance had to resort in their efforts to apply the classic orders to uses for which they were not adapted. But all such aberrations in the use of classic elements are superficial and open. A more radical violation of architectural veracity is found in the manner in which the buttress system is concealed. The thrusts of the nave vaulting are met by a series of flying buttresses carried over the aisle roof in Gothic fashion (Fig. 139). But it would not do to have flying buttresses appear in an ostensibly classic system, and Wren accordingly hid them from sight by a screen wall made to look like an upper story in the general view of the exterior. It is not until one mounts to the terrace of the drum, and looking down finds the space between the clerestory and outer wall open to the sky, that he discovers the buttresses there, and realizes the deceitful character of the architectural scheme. Perhaps this illustrates another point in which Wren "sought to reconcile the Gothic to a better manner." A similar treatment occurs in that part of the nave of St. Peter's which was built by Maderno. Michael Angelo's great external order had obliged him, as we saw (p. 68), to carry up the aisle wall to the height of the clerestory, but he filled up the space over the aisle with his small embedded dome (Fig. 32, p. 69). In Maderno's part the dome is omitted, and the space over the aisle vaulting is left open to the sky as in St. Paul's. But the buttresses of St. Peter's are solid cross walls with no suggestion of Gothic form. In the vaulting of the apse Wren has followed the quasi-mediæval form adopted by Michael Angelo in the apse of St. Peter's, dividing it into three shallow cells on converging ribs rising from the stumpy pilasters of the attic.

Fig 139.—Half section of the nave of St. Paul's.

Of the architectural treatment of the exterior as a whole little need be said further than that it has no relation to the real form of the building. The masking of the buttress system by the false wall, and the application of orders without any structural use or expression in harmony with the real structure, are entirely in keeping with the spirit the Renaissance. Wren's other churches exhibit a medley of elements from spurious Gothic to pseudo-classic in manifold irrational combinations, such as can be found in the works of few other architects. These churches with their vaultings of wood and plaster—whether in the form of domes on pendentives, sprung from the entablatures of classic orders, as at St. Stephen's, Walbrook, or with Welsh vaulting on simulated cross ribs of plaster, as at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, or with barrel vaulting on an attic, as at St. Peter's, Cornhill,—it would be superfluous, as well as tiresome, to examine in detail. Nor is it worth while to analyze the spires of these churches. Spires made up of superimposed stories with classic entablatures in telescopic adjustment, like St. Bride's, or temples of Vesta crowned with flying buttresses holding up neo-classic tabernacles surmounted by obelisks, like St. Mary-le-Bow, are hybrid compositions of utterly barbaric character, notwithstanding the excellent portions for which they have been justly admired.

1. Vol. 2, p. 260.
2. Cunningham's Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 4, p. 71.
3. Cunningham, op. cit., p. 76.
4. A work undertaken at the request of the king, in which Jones reaches the astonishing conclusion that in Stonehenge we have the remains of a Roman temple of the Tuscan order, Cf. Cunningham, p. 106 et seq.
5. Cunningham, op. cit., p. 115.
6. Cunningham, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 266.
7. The Designs of Inigo Jones, consisting of Plans and Elevations for Publick and Private Buildings, by William Kent, London, 1727.
8. Plates 1 to 52 inclusive.
9. Op. cit., p. 265.
10. A History of Renaissance Architecture in England, by Reginald Bloomfield, London, 1897, vol. 1, p. 122.
11. Parentalia, or Memoir of the Family of the Wrens, by Christopher Wren, London, 1750, pp. 269–270.
12. Parentalia, p. 142.
13. Parentalia, pp. 261–262.
14. Wren had been appointed surveyor-general and principal architect of the city of London after the great fire.
15. Parentalia, p. 335.
16. Ibid., p. 273.
17. Ibid., p. 277.
18. Parentalia, p. 278.
19. Ibid., p, 281.
20. Parentalia, p. 283.
21. W. J. Loftie, Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, London, Macmillan & Co., 1893, p. 196.